VERNON — With a petition drive to block the purchase of the shuttered Camp Sussex apparently gaining steam, organizers are crying foul over what they say are exaggerated claims of rampant drug use and illicit activity being trotted out by municipal officials to build support for acquiring the site with open space funds.

At issue is a photo of hypodermic needles and syringes, originally said to have been taken at Camp Sussex, that Mayor Vic Marotta and Environmental Commission Chairperson Beverly Budz now acknowledge is a stock image that was picked up off the Internet.

Although the agenda for Monday’s council meeting includes no specific mention of Camp Sussex, critics are abuzz over that photo and others that have been up for weeks in the municipal building lobby.

The display, featuring slides from a presentation given by Budz to the mayor and council on May 12, includes additional images of vandalism and graffiti at the former campground, including swastikas and the word “heroin” spray-painted on the abandoned cabins.

Also included in the presentation is a depiction of a skull and crossbones accompanied by captions calling the site “The Scurge of Vernon” and “The Black Eye on Vernon’s Profile” and another proclaiming “Time to cleanse Vernon of this poison.”

But a Google search of the photo in question, which appears to contain a partially obscured logo of “Getty Images” in the lower right corner, indicates it has been in circulation since 2009. Critics are calling it a fake.

“We have an Environmental Commission chairperson collaborating with the mayor and soliciting the council to spend a huge amount of our open space fund based on false information,” charged former Mayor Sally Rinker, one of the petitioners. “Suppose you’re a potential new business coming into our town and go over to Town Hall; you walk into our lobby and see a skull and crossbones with hypodermic needles. It would be bad enough if it was true, but how dare they utilize a subject like drug addiction and exploit it as a scare tactic to degrade our town when it doesn’t even appear it was true at all.”

Marotta — who said at the May 12 meeting that “those pictures of the hypodermic needles that you saw came from Camp Sussex” — has since said he misspoke and said he would not have made that statement at all had he had known the photo was a stock image.

Still, he said, “People can try to twist the facts or spin the words, but I’ve been to the camp and seen the broken beer bottles and needles myself, and this idea that she’s (Budz) trying to befuddle or fool the people is as red herring as they come. And I think people will see that whole group (of objectors) for what they are — obstructionists, poor losers, people who couldn’t win elections and just want to spend their time trying to make life miserable for the administration. It’s not working.”

Budz, the Environmental Commission chairperson, said the decision to use a stock photo of hypodermic needles was made after she realized several original photos she had planned on using were either too dark or grainy for inclusion in the exhibit, which includes additional stock images of children playing and of families picnicking, gardening and engaging in other forms of passive recreation. She said the display was intended as “a representation of what’s on the camp site presently and also what our vision is for the camp.”

The vision she described calls for, among other things, reintroducing the monarch butterfly to the site and using a $354,000 reforestation grant to fund the planting of 1,200 trees as part of an “American Chestnut Park at Camp Sussex.”

Conflicting messages

But in Rinker’s view, the use of hyperbole and fakery to sell the public on the proposal is enough to call the whole thing into question.

“Did any kid ever go in there and use drugs? Of course — we’d be silly to think that never could have happened,” she said. “But if they could find a real photo, they would have used it.”

Marotta and Budz — both of whom said they have a letter on file from the current owner granting them permission to access the site — have since invited the New Jersey Herald to do so as well and to see the evidence they say is being left behind by drug dealers and others encroaching illegally on the grounds.

Marotta, in fact, had encouraged people at the May 12 meeting to do exactly that, saying: “If you haven’t done it yet, I would recommend to you that you walk up into the camp and you take a look into what was the gymnasium and see that in the wintertime, it’s a place where youngsters build bonfires in the middle of the building, with mattresses that are stained and hypodermic needles and all the remnants of behavior that we don’t want to encourage.”

But after visiting the site two weeks ago and reporting on his “Voices of Vernon” webcast that he had found little to substantiate those allegations, township resident Gary Martinsen — who said he found the cabins and other structures to be in surprisingly good shape overall — received a letter from Fairfield-based attorney Gregory Castano threatening him with legal action and demanding, on behalf of the current owner, that he turn over copies of all photos and video footage he had taken while visiting.

Martinsen has since said he has “no intention” of complying with that request and has characterized the letter as a brazen attempt at intimidation by the owner, Empire TFI Jersey Holdings, to prevent any red flags from being raised that might complicate their hopes of quickly selling the property and turning a profit.

The campground, which served for more than 80 years as a summer haven for city kids before falling on hard times and closing in 2005, has accrued more than $500,000 in back taxes along with about $2 million in fire prevention violations since being closed down.

The current owner acquired the site through a tax sale and subsequent foreclosure late last year.

The New Jersey Herald, on Friday, contacted Castano directly to ask if his client would extend permission for the Herald to visit the site.

His reply, via email, stated that “your request for access to the property is respectfully denied. As I am sure you will understand, any unauthorized entries onto the property will (be) prosecuted to the fullest extent of New Jersey law. Thank you for the inquiry.”

A second inquiry to Castano, this time asking if his client would reconsider the Herald’s request to visit the site if a town official were also present, was again met by a denial. “For the time being, no,” was his reply. “Thanks again.”

Anecdotal evidence of drug use

According to Vernon Police Capt. Stephen Moran, a search of police records for Camp Sussex over the last 14 years turned up only one recorded instance of drug paraphernalia — specifically, a marijuana pipe in 2007 — being taken into evidence by police.

Moran said, however, that police have gone to the campground several times over the past year to investigate other activities, including seven incidents of trespassing reported since June 2013. He indicated, without elaborating or specifying further, that there had been four additional incidents deemed suspicious over that same period, though none involved arrests.

The Center for Prevention and Counseling, in Newton, was similarly unable to corroborate reports of drug users congregating at Camp Sussex. Becky Carlson, assistant director of the center, which specializes in drug abuse treatment and prevention, said she checked with her contacts in Vernon and could find nothing further to substantiate those allegations.

Still, she said, “any situation where you have old buildings that are dilapidated or in disrepair where there’s poor lighting, and where nobody’s checking it out because it’s empty and abandoned, can potentially become a magnet for drug activity.”

From Marotta’s perspective, that is the whole point.

While acknowledging that the reports of alleged drug activity should not make or break any decision on whether to acquire Camp Sussex, Marotta said the mere existence of police reports or lack thereof can tell only so much.

“The property was owned by a foundation out of New York City that went bankrupt. It then went into tax foreclosure and was abandoned,” Marotta said. “The only way the police would ever know what was going on on that property is if they were called there. Otherwise a person could travel into that camp, seclude themselves back in the woods along the lake, and no one would ever know you were there.”

Marotta also disputed the assertion by Martinsen that hypodermic needles found during his own visit there were likely to have been medical supplies left behind in the infirmary from when the camp closed. Martinsen had said the only needles he could find, some of which were still in their original packaging, were all in the infirmary.

But according to Marotta, the foundation that owned Camp Sussex had a contractor thoroughly clean the facility when the camp closed, at which time any remaining medical supplies would have been carted away.

“We have a letter from the company that indicates the infirmary was completely cleaned out. There was nothing medical left in that building — nothing — when they closed the camp down,” Marotta said.

He added: “This idea that nothing’s going on there is pure misinformation and untruth. I’ve taken the time to speak to young people who live in this town that I know and who trust me, and they’ve told me point blank there isn’t a youngster in this town that doesn’t know that if you want to get drugs, or if you want to get drunk, or if you want to take your girlfriend someplace to have sex, Camp Sussex is the place.”

Open space plan includes Camp Sussex

The council last month, by a 3-2 vote in which Jean Murphy and Dan Kadish cast the two dissenting votes, authorized Marotta to begin negotiations with the current owner of Camp Sussex, with an eye toward acquiring 88 of the 122 acres off Route 565 on Lake Glenwood. Marotta, at the June 9 council meeting, had said about $1 million remained in the township’s open space fund and that acquiring Camp Sussex would likely take about half that amount.

Marotta, in speaking with the New Jersey Herald, further noted that the open space component of the 2010 update to Vernon’s master plan, signed by Rinker when she was mayor, had identified Camp Sussex as a parcel within the Pochuck Mountain Greenway that the township should consider acquiring.

Marotta last week provided the New Jersey Herald with portions of that plan showing the references to Camp Sussex along with Rinker’s signature. The Land Use Board minutes from that year also show Rinker and current Councilwoman Jean Murphy, who served on the Land Use Board at that time, as having voted to approve the revised open space plan and master plan.

“Both Mrs. Rinker and Mrs. Murphy voted in the affirmative, not once but twice, to adopt that open space plan, which called for the acquisition of these pieces of property when they became available,” Marotta said. “That’s the whole idea of an open space plan — not that you run out and buy all the land in the Pochuck Mountain Greenway, but as that land becomes available and there are funds available for it, the plan calls for the governing body to, in fact, acquire them. Creating that plan was a pretty big deal, and it’s quite disingenuous for Mrs. Rinker to now make it sound like it wasn’t any great big deal at all.”

But according to Rinker, the open space plan approved in 2010 merely identified Camp Sussex as one of several potential sites to be considered for acquisition — nothing more, nothing less. She further noted that under the township’s form of government at that time, the mayor — who was appointed each year from among sitting members of the council — had essentially the same powers as the other council members, with the mayor signing documents but serving as a mere figurehead in most other respects.

‘I’m for it, so they’re against it’

“Because I was the mayor, they want to blame everything that happened on me, Sally Rinker — but Sally Rinker has never been quoted, recorded, or otherwise in favor of acquiring Camp Sussex ever,” Rinker said. “This is a tactic this administration seems to rely on, that when they cannot validate sufficiently for the public what it is they’re doing, they reach into the past and say she was for it then, why is she against it now — almost inferring that there must be some motive on my part other than the issue itself, when that’s not the case.”

When the proposed purchase of Camp Sussex first was discussed at a special meeting of the mayor and council two years ago, Craig Williams — who was then the Environmental Commission chairperson — raised concerns about the possibility of underground oil tanks and other environmental hazards lying below the property surface and said that because the shuttered site was privately owned, township officials had not been able to check for any of that.

Rinker reiterated some of those concerns Friday, saying, “I don’t believe Camp Sussex is an appropriate piece for open space, certainly not with the demolition that’s going to be required and the other environmental concerns on that property, and certainly not with the potentially enormous amount of money it’ll take to make it a viable area for people to go and recreate. We do not want to see our open space fund wasted on cleaning up a property that the owners are responsible to clean up.”

The petition that Rinker and others are circulating, in addition to seeking to block the acquisition of Camp Sussex, proposes that any future use of open space funds to acquire land be subject to voter approval. The petition, with sufficient signatures, would result in a proposed ordinance to that effect being put to a vote in November.

Still, according to Marotta, about 50 residents who were led on an Environmental Commission walk-through of Camp Sussex recently all came back supportive of acquiring the property for open space.

“They had some questions — legitimate questions — such as what will it cost? Is there a plan? These are all legitimate kinds of questions that people would want to know. But to a person, they understand how this situation is impacting their lives and their children’s lives, and they’re beginning to get concerned because some of them now believe there may be squatters living in some of those cabins.”

He added: “I can’t believe those people who were so for it in 2009 and 2010 are so against it now. It’s really very simple — I’m for it, so they’re against it.”